Biography: Carlos Reygadas

Born in Mexico City in 1971, Carlos Reygadas became a lawyer in Mexico, specialized in armed conflict issues in London, and worked for the United Nations before starting his film career. Inspired by art cinema giants such as Andrei Tarkovsky, Reygadas made four short films in Belgium between 1998 and 1999.

He returned to Mexico in 2000 to shoot his first feature film, Japón (Japan), which garnered international attention for its startling content and magnificent aesthetics. Japón’s raw depiction of sex and human frailty within a uniquely Mexican context grew into Reygadas’s fully fledged style with his second feature film, Batalla en el cielo (Battle in Heaven, 2005), which competed for the Palm d’Or and won several other international prizes. His third film Stellet Licht (Silent Light, 2007) pushed the familiar themes and aesthetics of his previous work onto new, breathtaking ground and won prestigious prizes across the globe, cementing Reygadas’s reputation as both a leader of contemporary Mexican cinema and a central auteur on the global art cinema stage.

Reygadas has further cultivated the current renaissance of Mexican cinema by producing a number of notable films by other burgeoning Mexican directors, contributing a short film to the 2010 compilation Revolución and embarking on his most ambitious project yet — 2012’s Post Tenebras Lux, which earned him the Best Director prize at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival.

We are honored to be hosting Mr. Reygadas for a discussion after the sneak preview of Post Tenebras Lux on Saturday, April 27.